My Philosophy On Supply

An RPPO is like a chief - when you've got a good one, everything gets done faster. Since we can't reduce the amount of work, and we can't pay people more for the work they're already doing, the best thing we can offer our sailors it to help them get it done faster so they can go home. Supplies, and lots of them, help make this possible.

Personally, I loved being an RPPO. Before I got qualified, I always wondered why we never seemed to have what we needed, whether it was rubber tape, fuse pullers, or a half-inch wrench. When I took over as RPPO I found out. Before you could order anything, you had to have a stock number for it. This is more challenging than it may first appear, but not insurmountable. The real problem is that, in addition to a stock number, you have to have some piece of gear on the boat with that stock number listed on it's "spare parts" inventory. That's right - even if you need rubber tape to fix some motor, if rubber tape isn't listed as a spare part, you're out of luck.

Well, I found a way around that B.S. in a hurry - I qualified as a duty SK. SKs can type in a stock number and get a list of all the equipment that uses it - something the Navy deliberately keeps regular RPPOs from doing because it would make our job too easy. Not only could I order just about anything I thought we'd need, I could also uncover the origin of several "mystery" parts we'd had laying around for years.

As RPPO, one of the first things I took on was the Chop's aversion to ordering tools. He seemed to think it was a waste of money - we'd either lose them or steal them. That may be true, but it doesn't mean we don't need them. How hypocritical was it that we had to keep a special toolbag locked up, just for monitored PMS during ORSE, when we normally didn't have half the tools listed on the PMS card?

So my solution was simple - we set up each underway section with their own toolbag, and made the EO responsible for the contents. Each of them got their own locker to keep it in, and only the EO's had the key. When we pulled back in, we turned over all three bags to the Blue crew, and the only thing missing was one socket that had broken. The chop whined up a storm when we first ordered those kits, but you couldn't argue with the end result.

But the thing I was most proud of was introducing the Navy to wet-dry vacs. During my first ten years in the Navy, when we had to clean out a bilge we either used a roto-flex pump (which sometimes worked, if the stars aligned correctly) or a standard metal vacuum cleaner (which never really worked, and which would occasionally electrocute you to boot). Dewatering was always nasty job, but we kept on trying.

One day, I was told we needed to order a new vacuum, because one of the old gray ones had shocked someone. Come to find out, they had been trying to use it like a submersible pump, but that's besides the point. The list price for these things was like $250 (back in the mid-90's), and I saw my opportunity. Rather than ordering another metal beast, why not get an all-plastic industrial wet-dry vac instead? They cost around $50 and were designed specifically for what we wanted to do with them.

It took a LOT of effort on my part; after all, "that's not how we'd always done things". But, I'm here to tell you that it was the perfect tool for ERLL. We got an extra long hose, so we could leave it sitting up on the deckplates. When it got full, there was a drain on the side so you could empty it right into the nearest funnel. It would suck up everything short of TDU weights without clogging, and there were no more electrocuted M-div'vers. And, at $50 per, we could afford to have them everywhere.

Like I've said before - Order parts. Order more parts. Keep ordering parts, you'll never have enough. Screw the Chop.